Wintertime Summer

Any reader who lives in Northern California is well aware that we've had hardly a trace of rainfall in these parts since Thanksgiving.  In all the time I've lived here in the Golden State, it's the longest 'rainy season' dry streak I can remember.  Although I appreciate more sun during what is usually a gray time of year, this 'Wintertime Summer' is impacting the agricultural landscape in some not so positive ways. 

No green in the fields, no clouds in the sky

I work on an organic farm.  One of the cornerstones of organic farming is that we do not use synthetic fertilizers to grow our crops.  Instead, we apply poop from a chicken factory farm (mostly to the popcorn fields) and rely on green manures to provide fertility to the soil.  A green manure--also known as a cover crop--is planted to fix nitrogen or add biomass and organic matter to the soil.  In the fields at Pleasant Grove Farms, except where the wheat is growing, we sew a legume called vetch in the fall to do this job.  In the rice fields, an airplane drops the seed into the paddy just before the fields are drained; it germinates in the water and begins to climb out of the rice plants before harvest.  On the other fields, the vetch also arrives by plane or it is drilled into the ground with a Tye Drill (tractor-pulled grain seeding implement).  Unlike the food crops, which grow in the hot, dry Central Valley summer thanks to irrigation, the vetch thrives in the cooler months and relies on the rainfall (as does the small amount of wheat we grow).  This all works well, except when it doesn't rain.

The winter wheat hangs on

When I came back to work in this new year, I expected things to proceed at a slower pace at the farm due to it being our off season.  Instead in this long stretch of dry weather many of the cover crops need irrigation and that takes work, so we are busy, as if it were summer again.  On some fields, the vetch is surviving, clinging onto the residual moisture from summer watering and the rains we had in October and early November.  The high organic matter content in the farms' soils have helped, since they hold more water--both in times of drought and during excess precipitation; the wheat in our fields generally looks better than that elsewhere.  After such a long stretch without rain, the management decided to roll out the backhoes and tractors, rehire some irrigators, and put some water on a few of the fields.  Since Pleasant Grove doesn't have sprinklers, this means pulling ditches and strip checks, cranking up the wells and flooding the fields with a couple inches of water.  The hope is that this will reinvigorate some of the more sorry looking spots to ensure a good cover crop to enrich the soil.  The risk is that such an amount of water after such a time with so little will be the botanical equivalent of eating a 16 oz ribeye after a weeklong fast.  We'll see--the irrigators finish their sets on Thursday and the plants may be greening before the rain comes, which looks like it might arrive next week.

Last weekend I had the good fortune to take a much needed trip to Santa Cruz.  Even though I only lived there for six months, my time at the UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden was immensely positive, and a trip there is a sort of pilgrimage.  The Farm and Garden is a beautiful example of the harmony between food production and nature and a testimony to the loving care and hard work of those who have double dug its' beds, pruned the limbs of its' apple trees, and furnished it with water during dry times.  Like the rest of Northern California, it's been a long rainless stretch in Santa Cruz, and the CASFS farmers and gardeners also face the dilemma of how to keep alive winter brassicas, the ever important Ashmead's Colonel apple tree and of course, the winter cover crops.  On a small farm this seems a little less daunting because of the scale: with the use of sprinklers, it takes only a day or two to water all the fields.  Compare that to Pleasant Grove Farm, where a pair of irrigators spend a week watering only two fields.  Perhaps small farms--with their diversity of crops and more manageable irrigation systems--are more resilient in the face of these sorts of weather 'events'.

UCSC Farm and Garden, Jan 2011

Back in the Valley on Monday I got to take two trips north up Highway 99 to Larry Geweke Ford in Yuba City, part of the saga of replacing the console on the ranch foreman's F-350.  Unfortunately, this being a business outing, there was no time to seek out the acclaimed Five Rivers Tandoori Restaurant in Yuba City.  I did however, get a good look at the heart of Sutter County farm country.  In the afternoon, a thick white haze hung in the stagnant air and the trails of smoke from dozens of small brush and trash fires slowly drifted among the leafless walnut and prune plum trees.  The eerily still flooded rice fields appeared not as a part of a bucolic landscape, but instead as waterways leading to an underworld.  In this lonely landscape, the only people I noticed not in vehicles were a South Asian couple in a walnut grove picking wild mustard greens, one of the few things still growing.  There is much I appreciate and enjoy here in California's agricultural heartland, but at times like this I yearn for the swirling mists and thousand shades of green of Washington's Olympic Peninsula.  It would be really nice to be inside a cozy little cabin somewhere on the coast, watching the waves pound the beach and the rain lash against the windows.

During the workday, I sometimes glance at the National Weather Service's longer range forecasts, and hope we'll get a few inches this winter to fill up the reservoirs and cleanse our skies.   I am trying to enjoy this 'Wintertime Summer', with it's frosty mornings, warm afternoons and evening bike rides.  When I'm on my break at work I try to ignore the diesel and wood smoke infused air and the cracks in the parched earth and instead soak up the pleasantly mild sun while I throw sticks for a farm dog to fetch.  But I will be happy to hear the sound of raindrops and watch the big gray clouds move across the valley towards the mountains, whenever they arrive.